Phrases

be blown off course

Everything should have been planned a year in advance right down to the celebration party afterwards so we didn't get blown off course.

He showed no obvious injury or illness so we can only assume he was disorientated or blown off course, as he was found in an area quite some distance from the nearest known Natterer's roost.

Some things cannot be spoken or discovered until we have been stuck, incapacitated, or blown off course for awhile. Plain sailing is pleasant, but you are not going to explore many unknown realms that way.

blow someone's brains out

I just think that someone might consider blowing his brains out for ironic humor's sake.

Wanting to ‘blow someone's brains out’ sounds like the words of someone who has the temperament of a mobster.

The military are busy here as they are in all corners of the world upholding the conventions of war which allow them to blow someone's brains out with a sniper rifle at 100 yards but not with a pistol at one yard.

Piercing through a layer of virginal white snow, these exhibitionists look staggering, but if you really want to blow your mind, plant them close to water, where their effect will be heightened by reflection.

blow in

Then her father blows in, in the shape of a wizardish and craggy Jones, and we quickly realise her hatred of him at abandoning his family to follow the native way while she was still a child as she promptly rejects his offer to make amends.

I blow in when I can from my home 400 miles away, thankful for every chance to share the wonder and mystery and blessing of these last days.

Then you have some people blow in when the leaves are turning and for Christmas.

blow someone off

What in hindsight should have tipped me off was that she was totally okay with me blowing her off to go watch rugby with my friends - okay, I lie; to go play video games by myself for six hours - and everyone knows that normal girls do not act like that.

I was hoping to meet a friend for a drink afterwards, but the various people I had in the frame for the role of ‘friend’ decided to blow me off (in the American rather than English use of the phrase).

But first, I must prepare that last class, for the good students who did not blow it off and leave early.

And so, while ‘treating the vote as a duty’ may, in some people's eyes, ‘makes us less likely to see it for the precious right that it is,’ so does blowing it off for a hairdressing appointment or getting to the pub a few minutes earlier.

Nina's new guy is way more enticing than 9 a.m. calculus... but can she blow off class again?

It would have been easy to overstate these contexts and blow them up disproportionately, but the film just drops hints and reminders here and there to keep the focus on his own mind.

Anything that people are going to want to read they blow up.

But, the media does have a tendency to look at sales as much (perhaps more) than they look at truth, and so the media has a tendency to blow up the negative side of the athlete and lay low on the positive side.

Origin

One of the more colourful phrases involving Old English blow is to blow hot and cold, or keep changing your mind, which comes from Aesop's fable of the man and the satyr. A traveller lost in a forest meets a satyr who offers him lodging for the night, promising to lead him safely out of the woods in the morning. On the way to the satyr's home the man blows on his hands. The satyr asks him why he does this, to which he replies, ‘My breath warms my cold hands.’ At the satyr's home they sit down to eat some steaming hot porridge. The man blows on his first spoonful and again the satyr asks him why. ‘The porridge is too hot to eat and my breath will cool it,’ he answers. At this the satyr orders him to leave, saying ‘I can have nothing to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.’ See also bloom, gaff

blow-by-blow

The bulk of the former consists of a blow-by-blow account of every event and action in Mendelssohn's life and every one of his compositions, published and unpublished, life and works forming a continuous chronological sequence.

But all things considered, it's now becoming the top requested treatment in a lot of spas and one magazine I read had a blow-by-blow description of the many variations on how women can have others spread on the goop that turns them tan.

I won't go into a blow-by-blow description of every activity and argument they had but overall the overnight stay was a roaring success and I am more willing to venture into the overnight stay for JJ's friends again.

Origin

One of the more colourful phrases involving Old English blow is to blow hot and cold, or keep changing your mind, which comes from Aesop's fable of the man and the satyr. A traveller lost in a forest meets a satyr who offers him lodging for the night, promising to lead him safely out of the woods in the morning. On the way to the satyr's home the man blows on his hands. The satyr asks him why he does this, to which he replies, ‘My breath warms my cold hands.’ At the satyr's home they sit down to eat some steaming hot porridge. The man blows on his first spoonful and again the satyr asks him why. ‘The porridge is too hot to eat and my breath will cool it,’ he answers. At this the satyr orders him to leave, saying ‘I can have nothing to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.’ See also bloom, gaff

noun

I hope you got the list of my flowers in blow, which I had given Sir C.

There was a profusion of roses in blow and there was a wildness about it that I thought was very delightful.

‘I wonder what Mrs. Thatcher felt like when she came walking over the heath in her bride-dress, and Mr. Thatcher's arm in her arm, and the blush roses in blow, and none in all that great place but him and her?’

Origin

One of the more colourful phrases involving Old English blow is to blow hot and cold, or keep changing your mind, which comes from Aesop's fable of the man and the satyr. A traveller lost in a forest meets a satyr who offers him lodging for the night, promising to lead him safely out of the woods in the morning. On the way to the satyr's home the man blows on his hands. The satyr asks him why he does this, to which he replies, ‘My breath warms my cold hands.’ At the satyr's home they sit down to eat some steaming hot porridge. The man blows on his first spoonful and again the satyr asks him why. ‘The porridge is too hot to eat and my breath will cool it,’ he answers. At this the satyr orders him to leave, saying ‘I can have nothing to do with a man who can blow hot and cold with the same breath.’ See also bloom, gaff